Filter News

Treos Bio Enters Into Agreement With PPD To Manage First-In-Man Trial Of Its Lead Therapeutic Cancer Vaccine Program

Published: Sep 21, 2017

SAN FRANCISCO, CA and LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM--(Marketwired - September 20, 2017) - Treos Bio Limited, which is developing precision peptide cancer vaccines coupled with companion diagnostics, today announced it has entered into an agreement with Pharmaceutical Product Development, LLC (PPD), a leading global contract research organization. As part of the agreement, PPD® Biotech, a PPD service dedicated to biotech and small to mid-sized pharmaceutical companies, will manage Treos Bio's first-in-man study of its lead therapeutic cancer vaccine for metastatic colorectal cancer. This study will be conducted in the United States and Europe.

"We are advancing our lead program for metastatic colorectal cancer because patients face a grim prognosis today with existing treatment options and there is an urgent need to change that," said Dr. Dong Wei, Chief Operating Officer of Treos Bio. "We are on track to submit an application in the near term to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to begin for these patients our first human clinical trial, which will transform Treos Bio into a clinical-stage company."

Treos selected PPD because of its clinical development expertise in immune-oncology and vaccine trials.

"PPD Biotech has partnered with more than 750 biotech clients to help them meet their asset and portfolio development goals," said Rob Dow, PPD's Chief Medical Officer. "Treos Bio is at an exciting crossroad of clinical development, and we are committed to helping advance this novel product candidate through clinical development."

In addition to the colorectal cancer vaccine, Treos Bio has completed preclinical development of six other cancer vaccine products with companion diagnostics to select likely responders. These precision vaccines will be developed for the treatment of breast cancer, lung cancer, ovarian cancer, glioma, melanoma and leukemia. Preclinical data suggest that these products will likely have low toxicity and high disease control rates.

Despite the promise of using immunotherapies to harness the body's immune system to fight cancer, most cancer vaccines have failed at the clinical stage and have benefitted only a small subset of patients. Treos Bio's research demonstrated that the failures in cancer vaccine efficacy are caused by their poor design. Treos Bio's understanding of the genetics that drive the immune responses against cancer support the digital development of vaccines that can mount a powerful immune response to kill tumor cells in a large subset of patients.

Treos Bio's algorithms and databases are at the heart of its innovative Cancer Vaccine Technology used for the development of its vaccines and to predict their clinical outcomes. Each cancer consists of a diverse mix of cells and each person's immune system generates an individualized response against each specific cancer cell type. This results in extreme variabilities of interactions between people's immune systems and their cancers. Treos Bio's team of scientists has created algorithms to analyze billions of genes and compute patients' immune responses against their specific types of cancer. Treos Bio's precision vaccines expect to induce optimized immune responses to kill a broad mixture of cancer cells without attacking any healthy cells.

About Treos Bio LimitedTreos Bio uses computational biology to develop its precision therapeutic cancer vaccines, with substantially shortened development timeline and lowered cost. In contrast to presently available cancer immunotherapies, Treos Bio's therapeutic vaccines are designed to be safe and effective as an "off the shelf" therapy for a significant portion of patients of a particular type of cancer, identified by its companion diagnostic tests as most likely to respond. The company is headquartered in London, with operation subsidiaries in San Francisco, U.S., and in Budapest, Hungary. More information can be found at www.treosbio.com.

About PPDPPD is a leading global contract research organization providing comprehensive, integrated drug development, laboratory and lifecycle management services. Our clients and partners include pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device, academic and government organizations. With offices in 47 countries and approximately 20,000 professionals worldwide, PPD applies innovative technologies, therapeutic expertise and a firm commitment to quality to help clients and partners bend the cost and time curve of drug development to deliver life-changing therapies that improve health. More information can be found at www.ppdi.com.